Court: EPA right to regulate greenhouse gases

A federal appeals court on Tuesday said the Environmental Protection Agency is “unambiguously correct” in regulating and trying to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, C.C. turned back a challenge by business groups to the EPA’s first-eve rules designed to reduce emission of gases from big power plants, factories and automobile tailpipes.

“This is how science works — EPA is not required to pre-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question,” the three-judge panel said in its opinion.

The panel included Chief Judge David Sentelle, a conservative Reagan appointee best known for guiding appointment of Watergate special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

“The court’s decision should put an end, once and for all, to all questions about the EPA’s authority to protect us from dangerous industrial carbon pollutants through the Clean Air Act, including vehicle emissions,” said former EPA administrator Carole Browner.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA has authority to control air pollutants that endanger human health. Allies of Big Oil and the coal industry in Congress have sought to take away that authority.

Republican nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney has indicated he would rescind the regulations if elected.

“My view is that the EPA is getting into carbon, and regulating carbon has gone beyond the original intent of the legislation, and I would not go there,” Romney told a New Hampshire town meeting earlier this year.

Groups that sought to block the EPA’s regulations reacted with standard-issue big business boilerplate. Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers said:

“We will be considering all of our legal options when it comes to halting these devastating regulations. The debate to address climate change should take place in the U.S. Congress and should foster economic growth and job creation, not impose additional burdens on business.”

The years 2011 and 201 have produced the warmest temperatures on record. In the Arctic, monitoring stations have for the first time recorded carbon dioxide emissions in excess of 400 parts per million.

Carbon dioxide is the chef climate change gas and remains in the atmosphere for a century. Before the industrial age, the CO2 level at at about 275 parts per million.

The appellate court also approved the Obama administration’s first set of clean air and fuel economy standards. The approval clears the way for tougher standards, agreed to be the administration and auto makers, that will bring fuel efficiency levels to 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025.

“These rulings clear the way for the EPA to keep moving forward under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon pollution fro motor vehicles, new power plants and other big industry sources,” said David Doniger, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.